page_title: Akira (franchise)
section_title: Premise
hierarchical_section_title: Akira (franchise) / Premise
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Katsuhiro Otomo chevauchant la moto de son personnage Kaneda, Festival International de la Bande Dessinée d'Angoulême 2016. English: Katsuhiro Otomo riding Kaneda's motorcycle at Angoulême International Comics Festival.
context_page_description: Akira is a Japanese cyberpunk media franchise based on Katsuhiro Otomo's seminal manga, Akira, published from 1982 to 1990. It was adapted into a 1988 anime film and two video games. A live-action feature film has also been in development since 2000, and a new anime television series by Otomo that will adapt the original manga more faithfully has also been announced.
context_section_description: Akira takes place in futurist, cyberpunk "Neo-Tokyo", some decades following the destruction of Tokyo years prior by a massive explosion. A city struggling to prevent crime amid political corruption, the story focuses on Kaneda, the leader of a motorcycle gang, and his friend and fellow member Tetsuo, who is mentally unstable. After a near collision with a child-like Esper, the product of government research to imbue humans with powerful psychokinetic energies, Tetsuo becomes similarly afflicted. As Tetsuo struggles with controlling his new abilities, Kaneda, desperate to learn more, joins forces with a resistance group, including Kei, a woman he takes interest in. As Tetsuo's abilities start to go out of control, the military, led by Colonel Shikishima, take ultimate actions to try to contain him, wanting to prevent the same destruction as Neo-Tokyo as happened before with the test subject Akira on Tokyo years earlier.  Kaneda, Kei, Shikishima, and the other Espers work together to try to help Tetsuo come to find peace and end his destructive rampage.
caption: Akira creator Otomo posing on a replica of the futuristic motorcycle driven by Kaneda in Akira (2016)
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